August 16, the Court, constituted as usual, was observed to be less numerously attended than on the day before, but with two important additions: Philibert Berthelier among the Councillors, by right, and Germain Colladon, introduced as Counsel for De la Fontaine. Between these two men, says M. Rilliet, more perhaps than between any other notable members of the Republic of Geneva, the contrast was striking and complete. They might even severally have been assumed as representatives of the parties which divided the state and contended for mastery. Berthelier was the acknowledged head of the patriotic party, mostly native Genevese, the Libertines as they were called, from their zealous defence of the immunities and privileges of the citizens against the old tyranny of the Roman Catholic Bishops and the recently introduced consistorial rules and regulations of the Reformer. As son of one of the martyrs to the public liberties of Geneva, and possessed of wealth and influence, Berthelier had long been opposed to the authority of Calvin; his patriotism and his self-respect revolting against the domineering character of the man and the stringency of his religious and sumptuary regulations, so that the struggle in which he and Colladon now engaged, with the unhappy Servetus as their subject of contention, was but an interlude in the strife that had been carried on between Berthelier and Calvin for years.
In Calvin’s arrest and prosecution of Servetus there can be no question that Berthelier, making light of the theological grounds on which the Spaniard was arraigned, and trusting to the strength of his party in the Council, believed he saw a means and opportunity of worsting his old irreconcilable enemy. He thought little, and it may be perhaps felt somewhat indifferent as to the fate that would befal the individual whose cause he espoused, did he fail in the purpose he proposed to himself. Hate of Calvin blinded him to more remote contingencies.
Colladon, engaged of course by Calvin on behalf of Nicolas de la Fontaine and the prosecution, was a man of a totally different stamp from Berthelier. A refugee from France, his native country, for conscience sake, and seeking in Geneva freedom to enjoy his religious convictions; austere in disposition, rigid in morals and punctilious in outward observance, he had been forced to fly from his home in consequence of zeal too openly expressed for the cause of the Reformation. Safe in Geneva, he gave himself heart and soul to Calvin, and was found by him among the most useful of his auxiliaries in formulating his discipline and enforcing its observance, Colladon’s familiarity with business and his legal knowledge qualifying him in every way for the part he was ambitious to play. The party of which he was a distinguished member were now in the minority, but did not so remain for long. Within two years of the time that engages us, they had gained the ascendency, and were not slow to avenge themselves on the legitimate sons of Geneva by forcing them in numbers into banishment, and filling their places by naturalising the French and Italian refugees, who continued pouring into Geneva in crowds, to escape the persecution that then raged in their native countries.
The fiery dispute in which Berthelier and Colladon engaged at this day’s sitting, seems to have concerned Calvin much more than Servetus, its ostensible subject: the French Reformer of Christianity far more than its would-be Spanish Restorer, was the true object of the attack and defence. The debate in the old episcopal palace, in a word, was between the representatives of the two factions that contended for supremacy in Geneva.
We have unfortunately no complete account of what transpired on this the first encounter between Berthelier and Colladon. The Records of the Criminal Court are significantly silent on the subject; but that it was violent there can be no question, so violent that the morning sitting had to be suspended before the usual hour of rising. Yet are we at no loss to divine the ground on which the presumed altercation arose, when we note the point where the blank in the proceedings occurs, coming as it does in immediate connection with the articles having reference to the subject of the Trinity. Servetus, in the course of the interrogatory to which he was subjected, having replied equivocally or unsatisfactorily as to the sense in which the word person is to be understood in speaking of the Trinitarian Mystery, Colladon must have contended that he could show by various passages of the printed book before the Court, that the prisoner now spoke otherwise of the Trinity than he really believed, and proceeded to handle him somewhat sharply, in the way Counsel learned in the Law are still wont to treat those they have under cross-examination; somewhat unfairly, too, as Berthelier may have thought, so that he interposed, and must even have said something not only in defence of the prisoner, but of the opinions incriminated. And here it was, and in consequence of the warmth of the debate, that the proceedings had to be suspended.
Before breaking up, a number of books, which had been produced by the Counsel for the prosecution in support of his case, were directed to be left with the clerk of the Court; and each party in the suit, having noted its case, was ordered to be in readiness to go on at the next sitting. The books in question were the works of Melanchthon and the letters of Œcolampadius, the Geography of Ptolemy, and the Bible of Pagnini; the two last of which the prisoner owned to having edited and annotated. The most important of all, however, was the ‘Christianismi Restitutio,’ upon the interpretation of some of the passages of which, in contrast with the present replies of the prisoner, arose the altercation that led to the momentary suspension of the proceedings.
From the Registers of the Grand Council we learn that on the morrow of the stormy session of the sixteenth, Calvin presented himself before the Council and demanded an audience. He had learned, he said, that Philibert Berthelier had meddled in the suit against Michael Servetus, and even spoken in defence of some of the incriminated passages of the prisoner’s book—a mortal offence in Calvin’s eyes, and an indication, not to be mistaken, of hostility to himself as virtual pursuer of the obnoxious heretic. The time had come, in fact, when, throwing aside disguise, Calvin must come from behind Nicolas de la Fontaine, avow himself the prosecutor, and nip in the bud, if he could, the new growth of rebellion against his rule for which Servetus, he saw, was now to be made the pretext.
In the interference of Berthelier, which we see must have given such umbrage to Calvin, we have the first open indication by the Libertine party of their sympathy with the prisoner; sympathy, real or pretended, that may be said to have sealed the fate of the unhappy Servetus; for the issue, though continuing to be debated on the ground of speculative theology, on which so many questions might be raised and doubts entertained, was henceforth to a certain extent transferred to the domain of politics, on which there was the one practical issue involved, as to who or which party that divided the state of Geneva should have the upper hand.
It may be fairly presumed that Calvin, with the great advantage he had in natural talent and acquirements, had no difficulty in satisfying the majority of the Judges of the culpability of Servetus on theological grounds; his opinions differed too obviously from all they had ever been led to believe concerning the Trinity and Infant Baptism, especially, to leave them in any doubt as to this. Servetus differed, in fact, on every point brought forward, from the doctrine familiar to the mind of Geneva—enough of itself to lay him under suspicion; and, accepting Calvin’s interpretation of the incriminated passages of his book, which his Judges must have felt bound in some sort to do, they could have had nothing for it, had the prosecution now insisted on having made out their case, but to proceed to judgment, and pronounce the prisoner guilty. But this was not done; the Judges appear not only to have felt no kind of hostility towards the solitary stranger in the singular and painful position in which he stood, but even to have been moved to something like compassion in his behalf.